1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for image-display which makes it easy to search through massive image data for target image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, apparatuses and/or devices configured to generate digital-image data, such as digital cameras and scanners have been widely available and massive digital image data is owned by an individual person. Consequently, demands for managing and retrieving the massive digital-image data have increased significantly, and several technologies associated therewith have become available.
For example, Europe Patent No. 1098254 discloses a system configured to graph and display the list of image-data items as a histogram or the like, which allows a user to search for desired data. According to the technology written in Europe Patent No. 1098254, data on the number of image-file-data items is displayed for each time-information item added to the image-file-data item as a bar chart. Further, according to the written technology, part of the bar chart is selected so that the image-file-data item corresponding to the area of the selected part is displayed as a thumbnail image with the date information of the image-file-data item.
Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-255740 discloses the method of classifying image-data items based on a certain classification indicator (by date, by month, by folder, etc.) and displaying thumbnail images for each classified page. For example, if a user selects the indicator “by month”, the image-data items are classified by month based on the date and the time when the image-file-data items were generated and displayed. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 7,304,754 discloses that the number of the pixels of image-file data is compared to the print size and the degree of the appropriateness of the image-file data for favorable printing is displayed by bordering the image-file data in different colors.
However, the above-described technology written in Europe Patent No. 1098254 merely allows for displaying how many image-file-data items corresponding to the generation date there are through the graph. Therefore, even though the above-described technology is useful to know how many image-file-data items corresponding to a predetermined date there are, it is difficult for the user to know what kind of image-file-data items exist by simply viewing the graph. Further, for finding desired image-file data, part of the bar chart should be selected, so as to shift to a screen image displaying the image-file data.
According to the technology written in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-255740, image-file-data items satisfying a single search condition are displayed in list form. Namely, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-255740 discloses no method for displaying image-file-data items satisfying at least two search conditions in list form. As shown in FIG. 11 illustrating Japanese Laid-Open No. 2004-255740, the above-described technology merely allows either displaying the image-file data corresponding to date-and-time information after specifying the date-and-time information as the search condition or displaying the file data corresponding to a specified file name.
According to the invention disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,304,754, whether or not the image-file data is appropriate for image-file printing is displayed by bordering the image-file data with frames of different colors. Namely, the above-described invention does not allow for displaying image-file-data items satisfying the at least two search conditions in list form. Therefore, if many image-file-data items are displayed and bordered with frames of different colors, the display space of a display-screen image is decreased by as much as the above-described frames. Further, the above-described configuration gives the display-screen image a confused appearance.